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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

I just used Tamiya´s XF-63 with a little bit of
pure white and I applied this extremely thinned paint mix (90% thinner) in
several coats. I insisted with the mix more or less depending the place but, as
can be clearly seen in the pictures, all the underneath effects can be clearly
seen and look integrated with the base colour. Just at the end, I airbrushed
pure white in a few parts to get the maximum light.

Is very important to airbrush slowly the base coat, no hurry. Just see how it
covers little by little the weathered base to your taste. You can hide the
awful dirt spots or the illogical and ugly chips.

And most important: From this moment, you have a base colour that will be
really helpful in the following steps as you have a map, a guide to highlight,
chip and weather your kit. From now ahead, you have your second chance.

Now,
time to the first base coat for the accessories. Probably once the vehicle is
close to be finished, I´ll change some of the colours according to the general
aspect of the vehicle. But I like to paint this base coat to the tools,
accessories, because it really helps to evaluate the general contrast and
finish of the tank. I used different brown colours for the wooden parts and
pure black for the metallic parts.

In
this step, I´ll add some light points to the tank. Using a light mix of black,
white and medium blue (acrylics) and using a brush, I start to highlight
rivets, edges, hinges, etc. Maybe the result in this step is a little bit
unrealistic, but it´s the perfect base for future weathering works. These parts
will suffer different treatment that will darken them to my taste, but always
maintaining a subtle colour and light difference with the neighbouring tank
parts.

Is this colour modulation? Maybe, I do not know, but really works for me!

Chipping, as well as adding mud, are the most frightening steps for modellers. Many great kits
with excellent base coats, filters, etc, are spoiled in this step. Reasons are
various. The first one is that maybe, the last time we made them, was 4 months
ago when we made our last tank. Our hand is cold and it´s not easy to get the
pulse and the perfect mix of the paint once we´re beginning our work. In this case, just some days ago,
we´ve already made plenty of them in our B&W base colour. So, our hand is
ready! And now, under the base coat, we see some of the chips and scratches we
have already done, so it´s not so terrifying for us, because our terrible
enemy, a flat, clean surfaces, is already dirt, showing some chipping effect. What we have just to decide if we increase them or not!

And, as we have seen the B&W weathered step, we already know which chips are
right and which are wrong. So, as I use to say, we do not work under pressure,
we have a ready hand and a clear idea about where to put our chips and
scratches.

For this step, I made three different grey colours for the superficial
chippings.